


Ad D’Lo Yada

by larissabernstein



Series: Robed in Strength [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Drinking, Episode: s01e13 Savoureux, Female Jewish Character, Gen, Introspection, POV Female Character, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-27 16:38:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6292066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larissabernstein/pseuds/larissabernstein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This vignette takes place during episode 1x13, <em>Savoureux</em>.<br/>Written for Purimgifts 2016.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ad D’Lo Yada

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JinkyO](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JinkyO/gifts).



There is a fine line between friend and foe, and alcohol has very little to do with its blurring. If anything, inebriation only serves to heighten her awareness of the fact that this line is a very disputable demarcation from the start. There is no point in mistaking the good guy for the bad, or the bad for the good, if there is no morally “good” or “bad” to begin with. It’s all about evidence and laws.

  
Because what are you to do or feel or believe when a person in your immediate surroundings, someone you used to call a colleague and have tentatively begun to see as a friend, turns out to be a murderer? Someone you trusted and who did a pretty good impression of placing his trust in you as well.

  
So that’s how it is then, Beverly thinks and puts down her empty glass. It is her third this evening, but she does not feel sufficiently numb yet.

  
That’s how it must be for countless people that are so used to occupying the same spaces and breathing the same air as their  
acquaintances-turned-killers that the sudden discovery of the monster behind the facade not only makes them question everything they've ever believed in, but leaves a gaping hole in their world. The monsters are family members. Colleagues. Friends. Individuals whom you think you know and like and love. Taken away by the gruesome truth and leaving behind a void.

  
In the line of her work, she has probably shaken hundreds of people’s trust in their so-called friends to the very foundations.

  
Beverly shakes her head. These musings will do her no good. She has never thought of the people she helped to convict as biblically bad guys. It is a job that is satisfying on many levels - finding evidence against all odds, using thorough analysis to scent out even the most resourceful perps, their crimes given away by traces of DNA embedded in fibres, by cross-sections taking the witness stand. But the self-congratulatory feeling of having brought a sinner to justice is not part of this satisfaction. You don’t get this job because you have the moral high ground. It’s about science. Facts over feelings. Just like pitiable backstories, horrific childhoods, or traumatic experiences don't alter what you see in your microscope.

  
And still…

  
Processing Will was an absolute low-point in her job. Scraping his fingernails and collecting samples, analysing them. All the while as close to praying as she’s ever been, even after the tests came back positive. Please let it be a mistake, a terrible misunderstanding, anything.

  
The fishing lures, however, took things into the realm of the surreal. Science says they have a psychopathic serial killer on their hands. This is not something you can explain with a state of confusion, of a mind disturbed enough by traumatic images to sink into mental illness.

  
This is something else entirely - and it has made Beverly go through so many emotions already she's sure they will last her a life time.

  
Shock. Disbelief. Hope. Denial. Anger. Betrayal.

  
Grief.

  
She sinks back into the cushions of the couch, her arms leaden and head throbbing.

The bottle is empty, but this grief is bottomless. 

 

 

 

Ernest Normand, Esther Denouncing Haman (1888)


End file.
